religion, a mere illusion?

"religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."
-Freud

i got to thinking about religion today as i fought to figure out whether faith is just disguised ignorance. people are so passionate about their religious beliefs they are willing to kill others to defend them. i remember when this topic first came up in lecture last semester, the discussion of science vs. religion. even my professor began to become angered and irritated while the rest of us sat amused and interested. especially when the bold statement: "knowledge is better than ignorance." was used referring to science as knowledge and religious people as ignoramuses. if religion in fact is just a delusion then that would mean every moral, every law, every god, every belief, every wish, and every prayer was time/energy wasted. i'm not sure if our core being would let us accept that the very foundations of ourselves were merely a delusion. therein comes the defense mech: denial.

our lives are set and controlled by a higher being or so we would like to believe because now whenever something bad happens we have something/someone to pass the blame onto. whether it's god, or satan, bad karma, or reincarnation, maybe it's because of a horrible deed committed in your past life. we would like to blame it on anything that is ultimately out of our control. so is religion really just a delusional wish fulfillment? is a belief really just something that we use as a psychological comfort?

i think religion offers us some kind of control over aspects of our lives we can't usually control, such as fate, natural disasters, death, etc...

"religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities."
-Future of an Illusion

religion is just a widely accepted paranoid delusion. one person's paranoid delusion that isn't accepted is considered crazy. religious people share the same delusional symptoms as many neurotic patients. does that mean that religious people are therefore neurotic for believing in something bigger than themselves? if obsessive compulsions are considered psychologically abnormal then what be of religious traditions? are those just as crazy? is it true that man created religion when he felt helpless and led us to believe that he was created in god's image when in reality it was he who created god in his image? when i say god, i mean it in the generic term of a higher being greater than ourselves.

"religion offers us all a mass produced comfortable illusion."

some philosophers say that humans created god in our own image without any of our human defects. eventually in our afterlife we will partake in that perfect life as a perfect being. our struggle to become something greater than ourselves has led us to believe in a perfect afterlife...but does it really exist? maybe faith is the key to open that door and those who believe will actually obtain it. or maybe we just die, and that's it. if the actions taken in our lifetime are the only things that connect us to this world, then maybe we should stop worrying about what is in the afterlife, but try to make a difference while still in the realm of certainty.

hmm...maybe it's because i'm slowly losing my faith and having doubts about my religion, but i think i'm willing to take another look at reality. by the way this is just my mental vomiting so if none of it makes sense or i've offended anyone, please accept my apology. if you're wondering, i was born and raised a buddhist.

"that's me in the corner
that's me in the spotlight
i'm losing my religion..."
-R.E.M.